


come back to me (promise)

by epanouiii



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Chronic Pain, First Kiss, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, but dw u've got a, but with a t w i s t, its abt to be angsty asf so buckle up kiddos we're going in the death mobile, its one of those y'all, kinda ?, to look forward to, u'll see, zuko!centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-18
Updated: 2020-09-18
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:29:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26522956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epanouiii/pseuds/epanouiii
Summary: He thinks of fire, and the pressure in his chest—the feeling offalling, and of a boy who grew up surrounded not by volcanos and blue oceans but snow and icebergs—of the agony he feels as fear that is not his own grips him—and he whispers, “please don't be my soulmate," into the curve of Sokka's neck.~From the very beginning, Zuko is destined for tragedy.
Relationships: Sokka & Zuko (Avatar), Sokka/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 24
Kudos: 234





	come back to me (promise)

**Author's Note:**

> this is gonna be wild guys im not even joking 
> 
> special thanks to [Duckseamai](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duckseamail) and [snoweytano](https://archiveofourown.org/users/snoweytano) for beta'ing !! bruh this is my first beta'ed fic im kinda(?) legit now
> 
> tw in end notes

The first time he sees a soul mark is while he’s having tea with his uncle.

It’s just the two of them. Zuko’s grandfather has been in a rage all day, and no one is very keen on interrupting him. Azula is somewhere else in the palace, most likely with Mai and Ty Lee, and he doesn’t know where either of his parents are. Zuko suspects his mother left him with his uncle to keep him out of trouble. Uncle’s in the middle of telling a story about his travels when Zuko, in a fit of clumsiness, knocks his cup off the table. 

His face reddens immediately, heat pooling under the surface of his cheeks. He can imagine exactly what his sister would say. _You’re barely a prince, Zuzu. You can’t even hold your teacup correctly._

His uncle doesn’t act nearly as vicious. Instead, he reaches for the tea cup and asks a servant for a towel and a replacement. As his hand reaches for the cup, his sleeve moves, and Zuko notices a line of black writing on the inside of his wrist. It’s hidden partially beneath the folds of his robes, and Zuko can’t make out the words, but he knows what it is the minute he sees it.

A soul mark.

He can barely contain himself as his uncle deals with the mess. Even as the servant comes in with what his uncle asked for and leaves after he waves them away, saying, “I can clean it up, I’m not that old,” Zuko keeps his interest carefully concealed.

It’s a sensitive subject for many nobles. It’s no wonder why; they are a permanent reminder of death.

“Where was I, Zuko?”

Snapping his head up, he shrinks under his uncle’s knowing gaze. “Pardon?”

“It seems my time in the southern Earth Kingdom is of no great importance to you,” he comments, one eyebrow raised, and Zuko shrinks even further, his shoulders hunching in on himself. He isn’t supposed to do that. His royal tutor has been trying to correct his ‘nervous ticks’ for a while. It will bring great shame to him and his nation if he cowers like this in front of others when he is Fire Lord.

“I-I’m sorry, Uncle. I didn’t mean to—“ 

“It’s all right, my boy. I’m only teasing.” He grins, and his voice is calm, placating. Slowly, Zuko’s limbs unfreeze themselves. His shoulders remain tense. “It’s natural for people your age to be curious about the mysteries of the world. And this”—he rolls back his sleeve carefully, slowly revealing those dark words—“is the greatest mystery of them all.”

Now, with the words in full view, and the permission of their owner hanging in the air, Zuko allows himself to openly stare. 

_I will find you again, my beloved, and we will exist in eternity._

The mark looks fresh, as if he only just got it. And against the paleness of his uncle’s wrist, it appears stark. But in that starkness, it is almost like a separate entity, a stranger on his uncle’s skin.

Zuko feels uncomfortably hot under his robes as he stares at it. They may only be words written in cursive, but they are the last thing his uncle heard from his soulmate’s lips. It is intimate in a way he has never experienced before. A secret he has not been privy to until now. 

He would ask why his uncle does not wear a bracelet to hide it as so many others do, but if he is so willing to show it to Zuko, he can guess why.

“It’s…” He trails off. There is no word able to describe what he is feeling. The tightness in his chest, the curiosity. His head feels full of smoke. If the sky were to suddenly open up and rain down hellfire on them, he would not question—this moment is _special._ He doesn’t know why or how, but it is.

“I take it this is your first time seeing a soul mark?” His uncle asks, curious and open and smiling. The last of the tension in Zuko’s shoulder melts away.

He nods. Then—because it’s uncouth to not speak up—says: “Yes, Uncle.”

“Do you have any questions, Nephew?”

He cannot help himself.

“Who was she?”

Uncle’s smile droops slightly. Still warm, still cheerful, but now with a touch of melancholy. “Her name was Huna. She was a seamstress.”

“I didn’t know.”

“I’m not surprised. Your grandfather steadfastly refuses to acknowledge it. I met Huna in a small town on the outer islands. She had my heart the moment I laid eyes on her. She was so beautiful in the sunlight.” His words are accompanied by tears. He snatches up a napkin and dabs under his eyes. “Forgive me, Zuko.”

He could not reply.

“We married soon after our first meeting,” Uncle says after a moment. “No more than half a year. We were in love, and we did not want to wait to be together. It happened without your grandfather’s blessing, but her parents were happy to welcome me into their family. If only it lasted.”

Zuko wants to reach across the table and take his uncle’s hand, to soothe away that pain in his eyes. But the table is so long, a storm-torn ocean. Uncrossable. And the pain in his uncle’s eyes is an island Zuko cannot hope to reach; he thinks he might drown if he tries. 

So instead, he asks another question. “How did she…?”

“She died while giving birth. It was a miscarriage.”

_Died._ Zuko knows what happened, why those words exist on his uncle’s skin. But to hear it aloud—it seems so final.

“Did it hurt?” His gaze travels to his wrist, and he knows his uncle understands. 

“It was not a physical pain that I felt when I lost her. All I felt was an emptiness, a great hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach,” he explains. “In fact, I did not notice the mark’s appearance until well after her passing. No, the mark itself did not hurt. What it represented, however? Now that pain I will carry with me forever. But do not mistake my words, Nephew. I do not regret meeting her. 

“To seek is to suffer. To seek nothing is bliss.”

Zuko leaves his uncle’s tea room with a foggy mind. After hearing so much of his uncle’s past, of the woman he loved and lost within the span of a year, he finds that he can barely concentrate on any one thing. His uncle’s last few words of their conversation follow him as he makes the trek back to his room. 

He said it as if he is glad for the suffering. Well, not glad, but not exactly angry, either. He sounded as if he’d accepted whatever fate the universe had deemed fit. How can he be so complicit? How is any kind of suffering—let alone losing your soulmate—a good thing?

The answer to Zuko's questions eludes him. He knows better than to ask his uncle again, who will only recite another proverb that will make him even _more_ confused. He wouldn’t dare ask his father or his grandfather, and he doesn’t want Azula to know what he and their uncle had spoken about. He knows she’s as in the dark as he is—or was, given the few enlightening facts his uncle told him—about soul marks.

That leaves his mother. She doesn’t have a soul mark he knows about, but she reads a lot of books, and one of them must’ve been written on the subject. 

He resolves to ask her tomorrow.

Zuko's courage finds him in the afternoon of the next day, and it leads him to the imperial gardens. His mother is perched on the edge of the turtleduck pond. A piece of bread rests in her hand, but when she catches sight of him, she drops it in the water.

“Zuko, my love,” she says, beckoning him to her with a twist of her wrist. “How are you?” He sits down beside her and faces the turtleducks as they rip apart his mother’s bread. Her hands envelop his, running smoothly over his palms.

“I’m well, mother,” he says. “I just…”

“Yes, darling? You know you can ask me anything.” 

Taking a deep breath, he turns towards her. Her eyes are wide, open like his uncle’s were yesterday. “What do you know about soul marks?”

She does not look surprised by his question, only resigned.

“Is there a reason for your question?”

“Yesterday…” 

Does he want to tell her about his talk with his uncle? It seemed especially private, and he doesn’t believe his uncle would want Zuko blabbering about his business to everyone in the palace. _But_ , he reasons, _she’s Mother. She probably already knows the story._ And she said he could tell her anything.

Confidence restored, he carries on.

“Yesterday, while Uncle and I were having tea, I saw his soul mark, and he let me ask him a few things about it. I...he told me about Huna.” Zuko averts his gaze to their intertwined fingers. “But—but he wasn’t able to answer all of my questions. By the end of it, I was still confused.”

“Yes, a conversation with your uncle will do that to you.” She sighs wearily. “Soul marks are a rare thing. Many people do not receive them, as many do not meet their soulmates in their lives. And most of what people know about them is through word of mouth. For this reason, there is not much that I can say. 

“I do not know if I’ve met my soulmate, and neither does your father,” his mother says and turns to him. Her stare is piercing—corporal—in a way the rest of her is not. In the watery morning sunlight, she looks faded around the edges. Zuko sometimes wonders if she’s a spirit, coming to him in times of need and comfort, only to disappear when she feels her duty has been fulfilled. “But I _do_ know that a person does not need to be your soulmate for you to love them, or for them to love you. You should not spend all of your time thinking about it, sweetheart, because you will only drive yourself mad attempting to predict who it might be. If you have already met them.

“I would advise you to have patience, and to not wish to know their identity so soon.”

She tapers off and turns back to the turtleducks. Her hands stay in his, her palms soft and lacking the callouses his own have. They stay connected until Zuko gets up to leave, taking his hand from hers and placing a kiss on her cheek. Still, she does not turn away from the turtleducks, sleeves folded in her lap.

He hears his mother whisper into the dark one night, “I love you, darling,” and never hears from her again.

The next morning, it’s as if she never existed. No one will speak her name or remark upon her absence. She has returned to the shadows, and he fears she will not return the next time.

After his mother’s disappearance, the palace has grown even colder, despite being situated at the foot of a volcano.

Azula surpasses him in just about everything, and his father doesn’t let him forget it. And after the talk he had given to him and his sister, the only thing Zuko can call his own are his swords. His uncle, hearing Father critique his firebending, suggests he learn to wield a weapon. He wonders if his father agreed only to keep Zuko from embarrassing him any further. 

His lessons with Piandao begin, and it comes easily to him—the swing of the blade, the feeling of the leather hilt in his palm, the power he never had when he was holding flames and not a blade in his hand—and he wonders what his life would have been like if he were not a firebender. If he were not Prince Zuko of the Fire Nation. Would he be happier? Would his mother still be here? He doesn’t know—he doesn’t know if he _wants_ to know.

And throughout it all, thoughts of soul marks do not cross his mind again.

The morning starts off well.

Zuko eats a quiet breakfast and leaves his rooms to go to his mother’s garden. The turtleducks have all but disappeared without her gentle hand to guide them, but he still finds peace there, being in a place she nurtured as if it was another child. Azula doesn’t talk to him, too preoccupied with her friends to even notice him, and his father plans to host a war meeting. 

One which he will be sitting in on.

If Zuko had known the disaster that would follow his decision to persuade his uncle, to open his mouth and utter those damning words, he would have shut his mouth and fled back to the garden, sat where his mother sat, and imagined the turtleducks still lived there. Imagined _she_ still lived there.

He knows he made a grave mistake the second those words left his mouth. He can see it in Father’s eyes. The anger in them burns brighter than the sun, and he fears it will consume him, tear into his flesh, and eat out his heart. 

And it does. By Agni, it does. 

In the morning, he rises with a heart full of hope. And by nightfall, he leaves his country with a face marred by his father’s flames.

The exaltation he feels when he sees that light in the sky could power his ship for a thousand years. It threatens to choke him, but he does not let it. Instead, he pushes his ship further into the heart of this icy terrain, and he conquers.

The village he arrives in is nothing short of disappointing. There doesn’t seem to be more than a handful of children and elderly women. And a single warrior, if Zuko can even call him that. 

He wears paint on his face and holds a boomerang in his left hand. For all that he is young and clearly out of his depth, his determination to protect his people is admirable.

Still, it does not stop Zuko.

And when he captures the Avatar—a mere child—he gives pause, looking out to the long-forgotten Southern Water Tribe. There’s a clutching feeling in his chest, as if his lungs have given out; an overwhelming sensation of panic washes over him, bound to him so tightly he fears he may collapse.

“Well done, Prince Zuko,” his uncle says, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with him, and it disappears like it was never there in the first place.

They pass through a village hosting a woman who claims to tell the future. Zuko wants to leave it behind because the Avatar and his pet Water Tribe peasants have already left, but his uncle says he wishes to speak to the fortune teller.

So he waits outside her establishment, glaring at anyone who dares to look at him from behind their hands until his uncle comes back outside. His eyes are suspiciously wet, and his hand is resting over where Zuko remembers seeing his soul mark.

“Prince Zuko, I would suggest that you also have a meeting with Aunt Wu. She is quite enlightening.”

Normally he would refuse his uncle’s request, but he looks into those tearful eyes, and, for once, he cannot.

Aunt Wu greets him with an air of disdain. Zuko clenches his fists and does not give in to the desire to burn her little village to the ground.

“I’ve been expecting you, Prince Zuko of the Fire Nation,” she murmurs as they take their seats on a few cushions. The room is stuffy and warm with scented smoke. It is familiar in a way he wishes it wasn’t. She peers at him over the fire, and she does not look at his scar like so many others but through him, as if he is not there at all.

“Have you?”

The smirk she gives him is equal parts impish and infuriating. “Yes. I felt your arrival with the departure of another.”

“Is it the Avatar?”

“Heavens no. That boy could not be farther from what I saw.”

“Then what did you see?”

“A life full of grief and pain. You, Prince Zuko, have walked along the precipice of self-destruction for years. And soon, it will all come to a halt.” His wrist is snatched by her long fingers, and he reigns in the urge to set fire to her home. “The one you are destined for is closer than you may think,” she says, tracking along the lines of his calloused palms, and that maddening smirk grows.

“Don’t speak in riddles, witch. Tell me what you see, or I’ll burn you puny little village to the ground.”

“So quick to anger. A descendent of Agni, indeed.”

“See this”—her finger trails along the line in the middle of his palm—“this is your fate line. It is shattered, broken. These fragments tell me your fate can end only in tragedy.” As she says it, that overwhelming panic rises within him again. He struggles to breathe in the stuffy, smoke-filled room. Aunt Wu’s breath becomes laboured, harsh, and they suffer together. “A great tragedy will befall your fated one, and they will die before their time. You will know this when those final words leave their lips.” The candles in the small room rise and fall with their arduous breath. Shadows flicker along the walls. He wants to ask her if she knows what those words will be.

“But this”—she runs her finger along another crease on his palm, he feels like he’s _falling_ —“this is your love line. It is deep, and it stretches long. This love—while tragic, in the end—will be powerful. There are not many who will feel this kind of love in their lifetime. 

“Rejoice in that, Prince Zuko.”

She does not have much else to say, or maybe he just doesn’t want to listen. He picks himself up and carries himself out of the building. Uncle’s questions are ignored because, quite frankly, he doesn’t have the answers.

The North Pole is colder—if that’s even possible—than its sister. The ice is harder, and the wind bites at his skin in a way he is not used to. 

Zuko finds himself in a tiny cave with the unconscious Avatar, his freedom within his grasp, and yet he cannot muster the willpower to be happy for it. The Avatar truly is a child. He can’t be older than twelve, and yet he stands in the middle of a one-hundred-year war, the saviour of their world. This is a hollow win—he may hold the Avatar, but he is trapped in the middle of a frozen wasteland with no way out. 

Even as his chest feels as if it is caving under the weight of the cold and ice, the smoke and ash, he thinks that maybe it’s a blessing that those Water Tribe peasants show up. 

His first time seeing Azula in over a year is nothing short of dramatic. Nothing much has changed about her. She still has those shifty eyes, the cat-like grace, the willpower to do what he could not. But she’s different, too—colder, harsher, more like their father than she had ever been before his banishment. Without Zuko there, without a buffer between her and their father’s undivided attention, had Father's rage finally engulfed her?

All he can see when his eyes catch her’s is the palace. The empty turtleduck pond. The Firelord’s throne room. His chambers. It’s like his past has struck him in the face, another scar forming over his eye, tearing away his flesh.

“Hello, Zuzu. I can’t say it’s been a pleasure.”

The panic that blossoms in his chest is expected.

He’s been inside this barn for hours. The world outside is dark; everyone is sleeping. 

Apart from him.

He can’t get his eyes to shut. All he sees when he closes them is black. 

His uncle is gone. He has no ship, no crew. He has nothing to his name except for a decorative dagger and his Dao swords.

And the burning in his chest. It started a while ago, though he can’t be sure how long, and it’s stuck under his skin. A heat he isn’t used to feeling. It’s clawing grip takes hold of him, stealing the breath from his lungs, wringing him out as he lays in the dark. His breath is a mere wheeze. Beneath all of that, there lies a horrible emptiness. It is all-consuming and splintering in its intensity. 

He is hapless to stop it. The pain rages through him, clutches his throat, sucks the life from him. He feels like he’s falling, and everything is hot. His fingertips are burnt—but they aren’t. He doesn’t burn. 

This isn’t him.

His wrist is held between his rough, calloused fingers, and he traces the spot he knows will one day be marked. The burning is still there, but it simmers, the flames receding. He thinks back to the words on the dagger— _never give up without a fight_ —and tries to carve them into his skin. 

He can’t. 

They don’t come with an emptiness. They don’t pull him under a wave of lava, don’t engulf him. 

He thinks of the pain that awaits him. 

The burning feeling doesn’t appear for a while. Not when Zuko leaves that farm, not when he reunites with his uncle, not when he meets Jet and his band of thieves. 

Not when he arrives in Ba Sing Se, the impenetrable city.

Maybe their walls have been shielding him, he tries to tell himself in the middle of the night as he raises his wrist in the air, inspecting. _The irony._ His lie doesn’t hold up against the hole in his chest. It has expanded, taken up more room than he has to spare. 

He learns to forget about it when he leaves the comfort of their small apartment. While he’s working, he has something to focus on other than the gaping pit in his soul.

When his uncle is offered to open up the Jasmine Dragon, this pattern stays. He serves people tea, he takes orders, and he doesn’t stop to think. He saves that for the quiet of his bedroom, where he bares his skin that is always covered by a tunic sleeve, and he traces different phrases into his wrist.

_I love you._

_I will find you again in another life._

_You will be happy._

It’s never the same phrase. Sometimes he’ll trace it once, and it will feel wrong; other times, he’ll linger on until the next morning when he dons his tunic, and he serves people their tea.

When he is Lee.

Then, suddenly, the pain bursts free from the pit, and Zuko is forced to go into the back room. He thought it would be gone for longer. He thought he would be spared this pain for more than a few _weeks_. He doesn’t notice when his uncle shepherds him upstairs and lays him down in his dark room.

His time in the impenetrable city comes to an end. He leaves for the Fire Nation and can’t bring himself to look back, afraid he’ll see his betrayal flash across his uncle’s eyes.

Zuko thinks of lightning and wears long-sleeved tunics. He doesn’t touch his wrist in polite company. He doesn’t touch his wrist at all. He forces those thoughts— _promise, the end is coming, we’ll be together again_ —to the back of his mind, just as he did the day after his mother disappeared. 

He does not visit his mother’s garden, he does not venture to anywhere Azula might be, he puts away his Dao swords. They remain at the back of his wardrobe, hidden behind three pairs of ceremonial robes and a black cloak. He wears the black cloak when he visits his uncle’s cell, hidden beneath the cover of night and bearing offerings that he knows won’t make up for his betrayal—but it is all he can do to not surrender to that hollowness.

It comes up one time when he is rambling to his uncle in an effort to get him to say something back. It’s one of the only times Zuko's seen him move. 

He tells Uncle about the gaping hole in his chest. The way it only grows as time passes has begun to frighten him. He clings to the edges of consciousness to stay afloat, to not give in and drown. He tells Uncle—he tells him he is scared.

A sliver of hope begins to blossom when his uncle turns to face him. Only, it turns to ashes in Zuko's mouth when the man picks up the apple he brought and turns back around.

He doesn’t know why he tries.

When he runs into Mai, he isn’t expecting it.

They crash into each other in one of the many long, empty hallways of the palace. She catches him by the wrist, and before he knows it, he’s pulling away before her fingers can even close around it. 

She looks startled, slightly—no more than the subtle lift of her eyebrows. But it’s enough for Zuko, someone who has known her for years, to know that what he did was weird. She opens her mouth, but for the life of him, all he can hear when he sees her is his father.

_“You will marry for power, for acquisition, not so that some petty marking can appear when your soulmate perishes.”_

He avoids those hallways for the rest of his stay.

The Fire Lord's eyes as Zuko holds up his arm burn with anger at his betrayal, but they cannot hurt more than the pillars of smoke that plume in his oesophagus every morning.

His meeting—talk—questioning?—with the Avatar goes about as well as he’s expecting.

But what Zuko's expecting is different from what he’s hoping, and as he is thrown out of the temple, as those sentencing words fall from the Avatar’s lips, he feels those hopes tremble.

“We’ll never let you join our team.”

But that isn’t what sends him running. The lone warrior. His blue, blue eyes from the South Pole. They cut through him, jagged with rightful mistrust and something Zuko doesn’t understand.

The smoke in his lungs blooms like a flower.

He retreats as soon as he is able, scaling back up the cliff to his meagre campsite. It’s a struggle to keep himself in check, to not burn down the forest around him, to prove them right. It would only make his failure even more overt. So he settles around the pit he’d been using for fires and let his shame pour out from his palm. 

It’s still midday, and he knows it’s unnecessary, but without it, he’s sure he’ll blow up a tree or something.

He keeps it up, carefully monitoring his campfire when the little earthbending girl comes out from a cluster of bushes.

He burns her.

He’s no different from his sister.

Surprisingly, it’s Sokka who first approaches him.

After the incident with the assassin he hired, he quickly settles into the group. Well, not “settles.” That would imply he’s grown comfortable around them. Which he hasn’t. No matter how hard he tries to, he can’t ignore the glares he receives from Katara. Not that he blames her, really. He remembers their time in the catacombs of Ba Sing Se all too well.

Toph is standoffish with him, most likely thinking back on the night he burnt her, as are the three boys who explore the Air Temple together. He doesn't know their names, because he doesn't want another reminder of what there is to lose. (The youngest of them is eight). Aang is too caught up in his bending and his pining for there to be any meaningful conversation. 

Zuko has taken to leaving the temple and venturing out into the surrounding forest to practice with his Dao swords. He doesn’t feel comfortable sharing this part of himself with them just yet—the dance of the sword, the part of himself that has always been his. He never checks if anyone is following him because outside of his lessons with Aang, they’ve mostly left him to his own devices. And he would never seek them out on his own terms. The fact that they’ve sectioned him off to a room on the other side of the temple is a little discouraging.

He wonders if it will always be this awkward around them.

His musings are disrupted when Sokka pops out from a pair of bushes, startling—no, he is _not_ scared—Zuko into holding up his swords. Luckily, there aren’t any flames to accompany it this time.

“Woah! Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you,” Sokka says, holding up his hands. But where Zuko is poised to strike, he looks like he’s trying to make himself as non-threatening as possible.

“You didn’t scare me,” he says, and Sokka’s eyes linger on his swords. Awkwardly he points them to the forest floor. “I just wasn’t expecting one of you to follow me out here.” 

“Fair enough,” is all he gives. 

Zuko finds himself struggling to talk. A familiar panic has set into his bones, but he tries to push it away. It wouldn’t do for one of them to think he’s insane like Azula.

“So…why _did_ you follow me?” He finally asks.

“Oh!” Sokka jumps slightly and pulls out a sword Zuko hadn’t noticed him carrying. “I saw your swords and thought, maybe, if it wasn’t too much of a bother—“

He takes a calming breath.

“—If we could train possibly?”

“Train?”

Sokka shrugs. “Well, yeah. I mean, you’re clearly good at holding a sword—I’ve seen you practicing once or twice—and the others all rely on their bending too much to bother learning.”

“I see. And you want to do that...with me?” He says, and he cringes at the way the pitch of his voice rises. 

“Yeah! Maybe we could spar?”

“Uh, sure.”

“But be warned, I’m probably gonna win.”

Sokka does not, in fact, win.

He’s sitting on his bed, a thin mattress in the middle of a large room, when there’s a knock on his door. He doesn’t think much of it as he gets up and opens it. What he _does_ think much of is the fact that it’s Sokka knocking.

“Uh…hi?” is all he can say, because—much like the first time they sparred—he hadn’t expected it to be Sokka to actively seek him out.

“Hi. Can I come in?”

“Sure.”

There isn’t any other place to sit in Zuko’s room, so he gestures to the bed none-too-gracefully, and Sokka takes the hint and sits. Zuko sits too, making sure to leave a metre between them.

“So, what’s up?”

“Do you think we’ll survive the war?”

_Of all the things he could’ve asked…_ “What?”

Sokka stands to leave. “Look, I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it up—” he turns back to face Zuko—”it’s just that ever since our spar the other day I can’t help but think. What if I miss a parry? Or my swing is too wide? What if I die before I’ve ever had the chance to live?

“I can’t—bring it up with the others. Aang is already stressed enough about mastering firebending, and he doesn’t need my voice in the back of his head. Toph would probably brush it aside because she’s Toph and can kick anyone’s arse. Katara’s my little sister—how do I tell her I might not live past the war?

“And then there’s you. Zuko.

“I don’t know why, but”—he fidgets with the end of his nightshirt—“I feel like you’d understand.”

Throughout all of Sokka’s speech, the shadow of a flame has been licking the side of Zuko’s jaw, the inside of his mouth, his bicep, his arm, his torso. 

He opens his mouth, and it is all he can do not to scream.

“I do, Sokka.”

The second Sokka asks Zuko _knows_. He isn’t sure how; he doesn’t know Sokka well enough to spot any of the many tells he surely has, but he knows. 

When he sees those wide blue eyes peek above the side of Appa’s saddle, he thinks back on their conversation the other night— _what if I die before I’ve ever had the chance to live?_ —and knows he can’t let him go alone.

They don’t talk about that night, and the trip to the Boiling Rock is mostly silent. Sokka looks like he’s lost in his thoughts, and again, unbidden, those words glare brightly in Zuko’s mind. 

What if they _do_ die? What if Sokka’s dad isn’t in the prison and they can’t escape? He’s not worried about himself if that happens—his father will most likely want him unharmed until he can oversee his punishment personally—but Sokka’s a foreigner, a friend of the Avatar. If they don’t kill him on the spot, there will be hell to pay with the Fire Lord.

He turns to Sokka, ready to open his mouth when he sees the way his eyes have softened. He’s facing the moon.

Zuko doesn’t interrupt.

He’s been found out. 

Sokka’s identity is still safe, though, and Zuko trusts his friend to get them—and Suki, now—out of here. 

As a prisoner, he’s up-close and personal with many of the others. They’re all forced to wear flimsy clothing, and no one has the luxury of covering up. It isn’t like Caldera City, where people can buy expensive bands inlaid with jewels to distract from their marks. No. Here, Zuko sees multiple people with words imprinted on their wrists. They look like his uncle’s—foreign. Like they don’t belong on their skin.

He sees Suki’s too as they mop the floors, a quick flash of black before she’s turning. The first thing he feels is pity. Someone their age shouldn’t be forced to lose their soulmate. But, simmering beneath it, beneath all the denial and pain where he keeps the memories of the palace, he selfishly feels relieved.

He’s in his cell, trying to quell the burning in his lungs, the quivering of his throat, the fuzzy edges of his vision. He almost doesn’t notice Sokka sliding open the door. Zuko doesn’t move from his position, and his friend doesn’t ask him to. He just sits on the edge of his thin mattress and looks at the floor.

His breathing is raspy. He’s sure Sokka can hear it with how small his cell is.

“Are you okay?” Sokka asks as he rests the back of his hand against Zuko’s forehead. 

The coolness of the touch does something to Zuko's body because, without him even trying, the smoke in his chest thins.

“I’m fine. Just a bit of a cough,” he says, and he knows Sokka doesn’t believe him. He doesn’t mention it, though, and takes away his hand. Zuko worries that he’ll start to overheat again—his chest always feels tight, compressed, like there’s a never-ending pressure in his lungs—it’s uncomfortable—but Sokka’s hand goes from checking his temperature to holding his own. In the dimness of the room, his eyes are the brightest things Zuko’s seen. 

“I…” Sokka begins meekly, “I talked to Suki before. We realised that there probably isn’t a future for us. I mean, her soulmate died, and she’s still processing it all. And while I know I’m glad to have her in my life again, I know it isn’t like _that_.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because you listen.”

They’re back with the rest of the team.

He and Sokka haven’t talked about _it_. They haven’t talked about their talk in his room in the Air Temple or on the hot air balloon or in his cell or the hand holding or the care Sokka seems to have for Zuko—that Zuko has for Sokka. 

It lingers around them, shifting as they exchange words, looks, glances over the campfire. 

It stirs, like the beginnings of a storm, when Sokka decides to visit his room late at night and falls asleep as they talk about whatever comes to mind. On one of those nights, after Zuko has covered Sokka’s body with a blanket and dares to rest his head down on the same pillow as his friend, he looks at the ceiling and focuses on the pressure in his chest.

It’s gotten worse over the past year or so, from a few seconds of pain to whole nights spent trying to get air through his lungs to wash out the ash. Those nights in Ba Sing Se where he agonised over his soul mark—those final words—are nothing compared to now. 

Zuko may be a firebender, but his body was never meant to handle so much flame. It burns him inside out, licks along his skin, up his arms, and around his shoulders. 

It isn’t wild like a natural fire. It doesn’t dare nurture like the Sun Warriors taught him. This burning is controlled, harsh, full of anger.

Without realising it, his body has migrated towards Sokka’s healing touch, and his friend’s arm is thrown over his waist. The contact aches almost as much as the burning. 

He thinks of fire, and the pressure in his chest—the feeling of _falling_ , and of a boy who grew up surrounded not by volcanos and blue oceans but snow and icebergs—of the agony he feels as fear that is not his own grips him—and he whispers, “please don't be my soulmate," into the curve of Sokka's neck.

Zuko can’t believe he’s back here. Before his trip with his sister and her friends, he hadn’t stepped foot on Ember Island in years. But to have walked on its sandy shores twice in the span of a month? 

He wonders what lesson he must learn this time.

He and Sokka still have their late-night talks. And they still fall asleep together. But sometimes, when the silence of his childhood room gets to him, he goes to Sokka’s, waking up the next morning cuddled into his friend’s side.

It pains him to be so close to someone he cannot have. And yet, when Sokka’s hand brushes against his own, when their breaths mingle from how close they are under the sheets, the chaos ravaging his body goes away for a while.

It’s a welcome change, and so Zuko continues to find Sokka in the middle of the night, their hands touching and their breath mingling and their pain numbed.

They’re getting ready to go.

Zuko has been lurking in his tent, trying to find his courage. The shaking of his chest has never been stronger. It’s debilitating. He can barely find the will to move. His head is angled when the entrance to his uncle’s tent opens.

Sokka comes in, pushing the fabric of the entrance aside. 

“Zuko.”

“Hey, Sokka.”

“Are you ready to go?”

He looks at Sokka, whose eyes have softened in the soft candlelight, and he thinks, _no, I’m not_. Standing, Zuko crosses the small area inside the tent until they’re standing in front of each other, and there is almost no space between them. 

He breathes in Sokka’s air, and as it travels past his tongue, it soothes the heat that has been burning within him for as long as he can remember. He catches Sokka’s eye.

Their lips come together.

Sokka’s skin is cool, his lips are chapped. Zuko’s hands come to wrap around his bicep, and he feels arms wind around his waist. They get closer— _closer_ —until there is no room left between them.

(It feels like they’re standing on opposite sides of a canyon.)

Zuko pulls away.

“Come back to me.”

“Promise.”

If his sleeve pulls back enough to expose his once bare wrist—so right, so _wrong_ —he doesn’t mention it to Katara. She’s looking out into the ocean, south of the Fire Nation. He knows who she’s thinking about. Zuko thinks the same.

( _Will he be safe?_ _No._ )

Zuko doesn’t mention it, because he knows that if she asks him to turn around, he won’t say no.

_Flames eating at his back. Pain. A flare of fire against his jaw, the inside of his mouth, his bicep, his arm, his torso._

There’s a smirk gracing on Azula’s lips. Her eyes cut through the smoke to meet his.

_He can't hold her weight, he wishes he had the strength—why isn’t he strong enough?—and she slips. He watches, horrified, as Toph falls through the sky, consumed by the smoke and ash. It surrounds her._

_“Sokka!”_

She’s aiming for him. He can see the lightning dancing along her nails. He braces for it.

Only her eyes cut to Katara, and he sees the plan form in a second.

_And he follows._

**Author's Note:**

> tw: non-graphic child abuse, death of loved ones, self-hatred, interpretive suicide
> 
> sokka: *dies*  
> zuko: *sees azula's danger sparks*  
> also zuko: whats the point of living anymore
> 
> I left this ambiguous for a reason, and ur completely free to interpret it in any way u want. i had a specific ending in mind that wasn't nearly as angsty and acc kinda cute bc neither of our bois die, but then i was plotting at 2am and it turned into _this_. i have no one to blame apart from my shitty sleep schedule
> 
> once again, thank u to my betas they're legends
> 
> come find me shitposting on my [tumblr](https://epanouiii.tumblr.com) lol


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